


we were meant for love

by starvels (dinosaur)



Series: Cap-IM Bingo [5]
Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cliche, Domestic Fluff, Endearments, F/F, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Marriage, Minor Character Death, Moving In Together, Multi, Sappy, Stony Bingo 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 14:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11579868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Steve and Tony meet at a wedding and fall in love.Everything is good and easy and wondrous and Steve will fight the next person that calls him and Tony a cliché that won’t last.





	we were meant for love

**Author's Note:**

> for my cap-ironman bingo square of "cliché" of which i have included as many as i can in a fluffy and self indulgent sort of way. 
> 
> set in a vague universe where steve is a firefighter and tony is some sort of car designer/engineer. everyone is alive and happy, blueberry pancakes for all, etc etc.
> 
> title from [take my heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8s0l1INhKY) by donora and v much the fic vibe.

 

 

It’s the subtle wince that people make when Steve tells them about how he and Tony met, how they’ve been together 2 months and Steve knows they’re forever. It’s everyone around them being continually surprised that they’re doing anything together, let alone picking out curtains together. It’s all the little ways everyone tries to impart their wisdom about how Steve and Tony aren’t going to last.

“Thanks for the advice,” Steve grits out to oh so helpful sales clerk Steve had been naïve enough to start a conversation with.

“No problem,” they smile.

He fumes the entire subway home.

“Do you know what I hate?” Steve slams open the door to their apartment.

“Bananas,” Tony says, idly turning a wooden model around at the kitchen table.

“No.”

“Dumbbells less than 30 pounds.”

“No.” Steve drops the bags in the door way and pushes the door shut.

“Nazism.”

“No, well, yes –”

“That thing where movie studios tease you with possibly making a good, feminist series before invariably going back to their shitty ways.”

“Kara deserved a woman who treated her right, not that rat of a man,” Steve says darkly.

Tony laughs, “I’m out.”

“You are,” Steve leans his chin on Tony’s soft hair. He smells like something fruity Steve can never pin down. He finds his temper thoroughly deflated. Tony’s unbearable like that. “I love that.”

“That I’m _out_?” Tony turns the word silky, double-layered.

“Yes,” Steve kisses his forehead, watching the way Tony smiles and closes his eyes into it.

“Well good,” he says, dreamily.

It is good. Very good. Not having to feel wary about wanting to hold Tony’s hand or call him his partner or call him at work and ask about their dinner plans. Tony always makes him feel so good about them. So safe about being them.

Steve’s been with guys that were out before, but he thinks this is more than that. Being out with Tony is less about being out about being bi and more about being out about being in love. Tony never wants to stop talking about loving Steve, like it still amazes him every day. Like _he’s_ the lucky one.

Tony reaches up to pull at Steve’s neck, to bring them into a soft kiss that lingers.

Steve forgets to bring up the clerk.

 

-

 

The curve of Tony’s shoulder blades is what Steve falls in love with first.

Sharp, delicate, steel lines balancing the long naked line of his spine in an open back, blood red-gold halter. Shadows from the sunlight trailing into the flowing, draped silk pants. He has a model’s awareness, a fighter’s poise.

Jess and Carol have a summer wedding.

It’s the perfect opportunity for flowy dresses and light sheer suits and everyone to laugh and have too much ice cream at the dry-bar. It’s also, apparently, the perfect opportunity for Carol’s engineer-designer-big shot friend to fly in from Malibu and slap Steve across the face with his exquisite muscles and sun-toasted skin.

“Wow,” Steve whispers, without meaning to.

Bucky looks up from the pile of dessert fruit he is turning into a pyramid. He glances where Steve is looking, scoffs and looks back down. There’s a lot of people, it’s hectic and Bucky’s been mostly nonverbal today but Steve still hears the admonition loud and clear.

“I’m not gonna,” Steve blushes, “Just.”

Just.

 _Wow_.

And Steve wouldn’t, wouldn’t think to measure up to someone who laughs like the whole room is their recording box, who lets Danielle Cage play with his designer bracelets and slaps whipped cream across Carol’s face and doesn’t bother to block the return hit. He wouldn’t think to try and measure up to someone who looks like they fly to the sun before breakfast.

But luckily, Tony doesn’t leave that sort of thing up to him.

The second thing Steve falls in love with, is the gentle lean of Tony’s side into his, as he glances up at Steve like he keeps the sky in his eyes and says, softly astonished, “You’re gorgeous.”

The rest of the things come altogether, come easy, at once.

 

-

 

“I’m just saying, it’s a little fast for you isn’t it? I mean you and Sharon,” Sam coughs a bit, “for years. . .”

“Yeah and look how that turned out,” Steve sighs.

They’re silent for a moment, the pace of their running slowing down as they near the end of their laps.

The auburn leaves crunch satisfyingly under Steve’s worn tennis shoes. Central Park is a park that ages well with the seasons. He finds even with cutting their time short because of Sam’s new work schedule and his own out of sync fire-fraught muscles, he enjoys it the same as he did as a kid, dwarfed by everything and hiding around trees. It’s always been a good place to go.

“Just don’t want you to be hurt,” Sam says as they come around the final bend, throwing a pointed look at Steve’s still bandaged side.

“I’m taking care of it,” he’s a slight defensive.

“I’m sure you are. Is it _taking care of you_?”

Steve knows what he really means. But still. “Don’t be cryptic, Sam.”

“You’re right,” Sam nods, “That’s Nat’s job.”

“Stop,” Steve says, through his laughing.

“Nah.” A light check to his hip.

Sam’s so good with this.

A tree lets several well-burned leaves trickle to the ground in front of them. Just like the highlights in Tony’s hair in the evening sun. Red; Steve no longer see the color without thinking of Tony.

“I’m just in love with him, you know?” Steve doesn’t care if he sounds wistful.

“I know, but that’s gotta be enough.” 

Briefly, Steve wonders if they’re really talking about him and Tony, or if they’re talking about Sam’s own strange on-off, complex poly thing with Jane and Thor. All of them out to see a group counselor, go in couples sets. He’s sure some professional somewhere would get a kick out of their strange, complex friend circle.

He shakes his head to clear it, slows down to a walk. Sam follows.

“No?” Sam asks.

“No, it is enough,” Steve says. “More than.”

Loving Tony has felt like the most powerful thing on earth since the moment Steve saw him.

 

-

 

Steve’s eating strawberries off Tony’s giggling body when Fury calls.

He pauses, strawberry dipped in the pile of chocolate pooled at the base of Tony’s neck. Tony hums happily as Steve leans over him to check the caller-ID.

“Damn.”

A peek of blue eyes. “You have to answer that?”

“It’s the chief,” Steve says, around the strawberry he’s shoved in his mouth.

“You have to answer that,” Tony sighs and stretches out, body undulating unfairly against the sheets. He looks up at Steve through his eyelashes.

“God, you’re not fair.”

“Phone, snookums.”

“Fine, but stay like that.” Steve licks his lips, “If I don’t gotta go in, I wanna eat you out.”

“Promises, promises,” Tony sings, dimpling.

Steve picks up the phone on the last ring. Chief Fury doesn’t even say hello.

“Why,” his voice snaps down the line, “did an old lady answer your house phone wanting to talk about zinnias?”

Oh. Whoops.

“That’d be ‘cause,” Steve rolls the words over his tongue, “I don’t have a house phone, anymore.”

The shuffle of the station seems very loud over the phone line. Steve manfully ignores Tony’s snickering.

“Why. Not?” The words are dragged out of Fury.

“Uh, moved in with Tony. Never set it up,” Steve draws a circle in chocolate on Tony’s arm. “Didn’t seem important?”

Devil in disguise, Tony pulls his arm over his head and arches back to lick the chocolate off.

Fury is saying something. Probably an admonishment.

“Sorry, Chief,” Steve says, trying to inject the right amount of chagrin while Tony is licking his own fingers and moaning quietly.

“Don’t get smart with me, Captain.”

“Never, sir.”

Fury sighs extremely heavily.

“Did you need something, sir?” Steve asks, bright as can be. He takes the soft skin of Tony’s hip and pinches it so Tony’s eyes flutter.

“You’re working B shift week after next,” Fury says. Not a question.

“Uh,” Steve guesses he is, now. “Yes?”

“I expect you to have a house phone by then, Captain. And the number in your file, as well.”

Steve bites down on his _why_ and the follow-up _no one else has one, it’s 2017_. Tony raises an eyebrow at him and reaches a hand down to tangle with Steve’s at his hip. He knows it’s not that Fury doesn’t like Tony or Steve or Steve liking Tony. It’s just he doesn’t like change without notice.

“Aye,” Steve says instead.

Quiet, except for the station sounds, for a moment.

Then, Fury signs off with a quick “Fine,” and that’s that.

Steve drops the phone onto the side table and then drops down to stick himself to Tony. Strawberries roll along their side as the mattress weight shifts. Steve is sure that they’re gonna find chocolate in weird places for ages, but he can’t quite seem to care.  

“Everything alright, babe?” Tony whispers, shifting to wrap one leg around one of Steve’s.

“Yeah, Chief just doesn’t like not knowing everything about me.” That or he genuinely hates zinnias.

“I can empathize,” Tony says, dry and smiling a bit.

“Ha,” Steve laughs and sucks a kiss to Tony’s chocolatey shoulder.

Tony pulls him closer, tilts back his head for Steve’s mouth, easy and trusting and open. Steve loves him. All the time, but especially like this. Eyes closed and trusting, curled around Steve in their home. They fit together so naturally, so simply.

The best thing about moving in together has been the way that the empty spaces of themselves have filled steadily with each other’s things, each other’s quirks.

Tony’s model car collection on Steve’s VA wood work shelves.

Steve’s baseball fervor taking over Tony’s free evenings at home.

Tony’s too-small MIT tanks across Steve’s chest.

Steve’s battle-burned arms around Tony’s scarred shoulders.

 

-

 

“It’s really strange,” Carol agrees, one boot swinging to tap against Tony’s leg.

Tony sticks out his tongue and kicks back lightly. Steve tucks a leg behind Tony’s and scoots him around to face him, before Carol and Tony can evolve into a fully-fledged war. Pouting, Tony leans heavy into Steve’s side. He smells like fries and expensive cologne and Steve has to resist the urge to bury his nose in the soft hair above his ear, maybe nibble on the gold helix piercing along the outer curve of Tony’s ear.

“I knew about MJ and Gwen, but I didn’t know Pietro and Crystal also got together at your wedding,” Steve says, to distract himself. They’re in a public hamburger shop. They don’t need to be kicked out for public indecency.

“Who could miss Pietro dumping water all over himself so he could impromptu-pole-dance,” mutters Tony, into Steve’s shoulder.

“Anyways,” Jess continues over him, “It must mean that we’re the focal point of all love in the universe.”

“Don’t tell Other Jess that,” Steve says, wry, “She’ll fight you.”

“Danny and Luke will cheer her on,” Tony adds.

“We’ll win,” Carol says, shrugging. The kiss she presses to the corner of Jess’ mouth is sweet, brims with newlywed charm. Steve smiles.

“You two’ve cornered the market on rabbit shacking, though,” Logan says, around his beer.

Peter and Thor laugh on the other side of him.

Annoyance flares in Steve’s stomach. He knows Logan doesn’t mean anything about it, abrasive is just his natural state, but. But, he’s lucky that Steve’s hearing is better than Tony’s after all his lab accidents, is all.

“To each their own,” he says, gritting his teeth diplomatically, and shuffles himself closer to Tony.

Tony grins up at him, one thumb hooking into Steve’s belt loop.

They wander home, hours later, full of food and company and Tony’s still wearing that same grin, still close enough that Steve bumps into him whenever he tries to move.

“What are you doing?” Steve laughs and balances Tony’s hips.

“Nothing,” Tony sing-songs and makes both of them sway in the kitchen, wrapping his hands around Steve’s neck to move them into a music-less waltz across the cold tile.

Steve hums, tucking his thumbs to Tony’s hip bones. “I like this nothing of yours.”

“Thought you would, darling,” Tony says and kisses him.

 

-

 

Steve gets flowers from Tony every week.

They come in arrays of blue and purple and red, in sets of red and pink and white, with impossible gold and silver accents. They come as edible arrangements – flowers of icing that melt on your tongue, and clever glass workings – spirals that are delicate and easily shattered. He’s not sure where Tony finds either the time or the variety of them, but he adores them.

Steve works 24 hours shifts at the fire station. He often leaves Tony asleep to come into work, to get caught up in 3 house fires and a brush burn, only to come back home and find Tony just gone to bed again.  

The stability of the flowers brushes Steve’s bones with comfort.

This week, it’s 3 dozen small bluebells made of near-translucent paper.  They’re tiny and fragile, but beautifully intricate. Drip-dyed with something that makes them look like small watercolor blueberries, it reminds Steve so intensely of Tony. He wishes it wasn’t 4AM, that he could gather Tony's voice to him through the night.

“What do you even do with all of ‘em?” Bucky asks scrubbing at his hair with a towel that was around his waist. Someone wolf whistles. Probably Clint.

“I keep them,” Steve shrugs and sets the bouquet carefully in his locker.

“Would’ve thought he’d stop after you banged,” Scott mutters as he walks past. “Ridiculous.”

Steve sweeps the legs out from under him, careful to make sure he falls into the space between the bunks and doesn’t hit his head. Kind-like.

Bucks sighs from behind the towel, “Really, Stevie?”

“Really,” Steve says and ignores all the cackling and hooting from the rest of the crew behind him, to carefully lock away the bouquet.

At home, after his shift where Scott repented by saving Steve from a falling support beam, he’s reconciled a little of his animosity and laughs through the telling of it to Tony. He’s flipping pancakes and gesturing too much with a spatula Tony will inevitably steal to lick.

“Think Buck wanted to ask why we didn’t get something more permanent but then remembered, well,” Steve waves the spatula at their kitchen in their apartment in their relationship of 3 months.

Tony chuckles with him. The pancake finishes browning and Steve slides it neatly to the pan and begins another one. He finishes up four more before Tony talks again.

“We could get a dog, though,” Tony says, around a handful of berries.

Steve pauses while resettling a lump of batter into the center of the pan. They absolutely should not get a dog just to burn Bucky’s biscuits, but. Steve eyes Tony’s profile, the way he’s picking through the blueberries, his shoulders curled in and fingers red and scarred from all his metal work. Weeks like this, where Steve is nearly gone as often as he is here, he knows Tony overworks. Knows it and can’t do anything to stop it.

Tony’s a great caretaker, but it’s like he forgets that energy could be directed into himself instead of just to other people or the world's problems.

And the idea, even beyond that, of taking care of something with Tony, of more than just having a home together, but opening it up, sharing it with something that needs it is –

Soft, good, sweet like blueberry banana batter.

“Alright, hon,” Steve says and that’s that.

 

-

 

She’s 10 and has arthritis and the sweetest brown eyes and curly, scraggly hair.

They don’t know her name but she knocks over a tray and a chihuahua with her tail and Tony delightedly calls her “Menace!” and she wags her entire body happily at him.

“We can’t call her a menace,” Steve says, firm.

They’ve just had two weeks of lectures from dog care professionals about how both the tone and the words you use with dogs, matters. They’ve redesigned their entire furniture arrangement to make space for food and water and toys and soft surfaces. They’ve had to argue unfairly long about being decent parents.

“Fine,” Tony huffs and then bends down to tap the dog on her nose, “Minnie, then.”

She wags her tail.

Steve would put a stop to Tony but he’s too busy imagining the look on Bucky’s face when Steve introduces him and Nat to the dog and they inevitably ask, “Like Minnie Mouse?” and Tony jumps out of the living room with jazz hands to shout, “No! Like Minnie Menace.”

“Minnie,” Steve agrees, and bends down to kiss her sweet head.

 

-

 

Sam meets Minnie and her favorite chew toy on the following Tuesday run. Minnie’s tail thumps the leaf strewn path as Sam sighs and rubs a hand over his face.

“Whoops?” Steve offers and scritches behind Minnie’s ears.

“I don’t even know what to say, man.”

“Say hello?” Steve offers.

Sam looks put upon, “Hi . . .”

“Minnie,” Steve prompts and lays in wait.

Sam takes one long look at his face and says, “No. I’m not that gullible.”

Drat.

Steve’s lips curl. Minnie squeaks her bone a few times. The trees around them move in a steady, comforting wave around them. Right now, the park feels like a gently rolled snow globe.

“You guys got Barnes with that,” Sam says slowly, “didn’t you?”

“With what?” Steve asks innocently.

“You two,” Sam points a finger vaguely like Tony is standing right next to Steve always. It’s a warm, silly thought, “Are menaces to society.”

And Steve laughs and laughs while Sam heaves a sigh and leaves him behind.

Minnie waits until Steve pulls himself together to toddle along with him. Her tail held high and her nose twitching, she keeps pace. They catch up easily.

“On your –“

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

 

-

 

Sarah Rogers won’t ever meet Tony Stark. But Steve still talks to her about him. He goes by the cemetery often, just to leave peonies, just to miss her where no one will judge him for it.

“I do wonder,” he says to the green grave, “What you would think.”

What she would say about a man that moved from California to New York to send Steve silly bouquets within a fortnight of meeting him. What she would say about Steve throwing himself into yet another mission of the heart without a backup plan.

_His eyes were too sweet. I had to make him smile, Ma. Had to be the one he looked to. And. He wanted to look at me. He wanted to give me the world, his world. Is that silly? Is that strange?_

He thinks he knows what she would say.

A nurse, a mother, a woman with steel in her moral compass and in her spine.

She always knew it was the things you didn’t do that made the most out of you. Who you are is in the absence of actions, Steve. The resonance of apathy rings stronger than emphatic shouts.

You plant yourself like a tree, she would say, and look to see what moves around you.

 _Here I am_ , Steve thinks later, watching Tony, bright and smiling so wide, welcoming Rhodey and Pepper and Happy into their home. _Here are my roots._

He hopes it’s action enough.

 

-

 

Wednesday is date night.

They stay in for bad sci-fi movie debates or go out for nostalgia sauced old-timers with cheese, always circle back around to cocoa on the couch. Tony’s legs are tangled with Steve’s as he drapes himself over Steve’s body and uses his free hand to hold a gesticulating mug.

Steve holds up Tony’s shoulders and watches him more than listening.

“So,” Tony continues, “keep the receipts when you go, and we’ll file ‘em when we do taxes. Also remind me we have to change the pin for the joint account, yeah?”

“Sure, smartie,” Steve agrees, rubbing his thumb along Tony’s shoulder blade.

Tony hums and squirrels his foot along Steve’s ankle.

Contented quiet creeps over the room. Minnie is in the corner steadily removing piece of food after piece from her bowl to eat from the floor. She gets that from Tony, Steve insists. On the coffee table in front of them is an invitation for Danielle’s next belt ceremony addressed to Tony&Steve with a personalized superdog crayon doodle that looks suspiciously like Minnie.

Tony has to go into the office tomorrow and Steve has a shift on Friday, so it’ll be two days until they really get to properly relax into each other again, but Steve isn’t worried.

He’s never worried about their future.

Unlike everyone else.

Tony kisses Steve’s collar as he slides further down. Steve rescues the mug and holds Tony steady as he leans to put it on the table alongside his.

The mugs were each other’s pottery class final projects, red-gold glazed for Tony from Steve and sky blue matte for Steve from Tony. They’ve already signed up for another session, alongside their rec center basketball team and their Saturday darts club and their shared dentist appointments. The calendar of Steve’s life stretches out before him with a daily reminder of Tony,Tony,Tony. They’ve known each other 4 months.

“Do you think,” Steve says quietly, “that we’re rushing into things.”

Tony yawns against Steve’s chest, “I like to go fast.”

“You do,” Steve tucks a strand of Tony’s hair back, playing his fingers along the curve of his ear a bit.

“Mm,” Tony hums, “Th’s nice.”

Devotion sits like a skyline in Steve’s chest, stretches on as far as he can feel. He doesn’t clarify the question. He knows Tony knows. Steve’s fingers trace the outlines of Tony’s bones.

Minnie clips over to eye them for a second before flopping down on her bed in the corner of the room. Outside, a car horn cuts over children laughing. The sound of the city is as much as home to Steve as Tony's arms have become.

Eventually, Tony’s face pulls back a tiny bit, his hands tight to Steve’s back and waist. His eyes look full, intense.

“I’ve never been more sure about anything,” Tony whispers.

Steve breathes out and tightens his hold. “Oh. Th’s good.”

Tony smiles softly.

“Me too,” Steve whispers and pulls them as close as he can.

These are their roots, tangled deep together.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i might play around with this some more at a later date if i can think of any more cliches but for now this is done! also really, if anyone knows of any jane/sam/thor uhhhh hit me....up....yo..
> 
> [[this]](https://68.media.tumblr.com/8befadab0cb138ffd6d7e5c168e1090d/tumblr_otf81u8F7T1wqgsowo2_250.jpg) is the inspo for what steve first sees tony in btw! :')) my life to dress tony stark tbh
> 
> tumblr post for this fic is [[here]](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/163301947881/) and the tag for my cap-im bingo is [[here]](https://starvels.tumblr.com/tagged/stony%20bingo%202017/). 
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and critiques always loved <3


End file.
